Senior

Ah, here we are, back at it again. The fall semester of my senior year is in full swing now, and after the strange registration dance, which every student goes through in the first week or two of classes, I find myself facing the following courses. (The registration dance, BTW, works like this: you sign up for more classes than you actually plan to take, check them all out in the first week, then drop the ones you decide you don’t like. You also usually try to have to get into one class you aren’t actually registered for, which is always interesting. This is why week one is so busy, even though there’s no real homework, because everyone is trying to jockey for position & figure out where they’re going to end up.)
Chinese – Yup, intermediate Chinese. Have to take it this semester and next to fulfill the language requirement. The section I’m in has an instructor from the summer program in Beijing, and she doesn’t really speak English. Which means, she’s teaching the class immersion-style, Chinese only. Which, at first, terrified me. However, after the first day or two, I actually found myself able to follow most of the class discussion. And I feel that I’m actually learning much more. It helps that our instructor has a very good sense of humor, and doesn’t pile homework on us. I consider the workload very reasonable, so it isn’t too bad. I actually think the class could turn out to be enjoyable.
Lit Hum. – Literature Humanities. Or, more specifically, Masterpieces of Western Literature. This course, in short, has been and will continue to be a blast. It’s a year long course (literature is also a graduating requirement), and in the first semester most of our reading will be the old dead Greek guys; we’ve finished the Iliad, now we’re doing the Odyssey, and other things like Herodotus’ Histories and the Virgil’s Aeneid are upcoming. The thing that makes the course amazing is the fact that I’m taking it with a bunch of my friends; there’s half a dozen people in the class that are good friends of mine. I really wanted a chance to take one class with some friends, and since this one is a discussion class, it’s perfect. Plus, the teacher we have for it is great too.
Money & Banking – This is an Econ elective course on basically the history of … money and banking. And it’s already fascinating. Getting into some of the issues about what money actually is, now that we’re off the gold standard is so interesting. This course shouldn’t be much work, and I’m enjoying it already.
Oil – The name of the class of course isn’t oil, but that’s the topic. Seniors in the Econ department are not required to write a senior thesis (though they can if they want to do the honors program), but they are required to take a senior seminar. Oil and the effects of oil on the macroeconomy is the topic of the senior seminar that I’ve chosen. The class is great so far, we’ve read some outstanding papers on the subject, such as papers prepared for Congress, and our instructor is a great guy originally from Nigeria whose background is in oil. This class is also small, which helps a lot. I should be able to spend a good amount of time working with him individually.
So that’s my semester outline. This year already feels much better than the last one. I know a bunch of people, the place is more familiar, I’m not a total stranger here anymore. Plus, it’s my senior year. May 16th is a date burned into my brain; the end of the journey, the goal line, is now in sight.